Finding Your Neurodivergent Family's Holiday Sweet Spot

PLEASE NOTE THERE HAS BEEN A CHANGE OF NAME FOR THE VIDEO AND TOP TIPS DOWNLOAD. IT IS NOW CALLED THE NEURODIVERGENT FAMILY HOLIDAY GUIDE - it does what is says on the tin.

Ever felt like your family is the only one struggling through what should be a blissful vacation experience? You're definitely not alone. The gap between holiday expectations and reality can be enormous, especially for families navigating additional needs.

Stepping away from the glossy brochure images of perfect family holidays, this episode dives into the real challenges of traveling with children who thrive on routine and struggle with change. Drawing from personal experiences as both an occupational therapist and parent, I share the hard-won wisdom that has transformed our family's approach to vacations.

Holidays often come with immense pressure—we spend significant money, disrupt our carefully established routines, and somehow expect everyone to be happier than they are at home. This episode explores how to shift those expectations and find your family's unique "sweet spot" for successful getaways. For us, it's a five-day maximum with carefully chosen accommodations and flexible plans. What might it look like for your family?

Most importantly, this conversation acknowledges that parents deserve consideration too. Too often, holidays become entirely about ensuring the children have a good time, leaving parents more exhausted than before they left. By developing confidence in your family's unique holiday style—whether that means shorter trips, staycations, or specialized accommodations—everyone can find moments of joy and connection.

Want to make your next family holiday more successful? Check out my Neurodivergent Family Holiday Guide (previously called The Internal Sunshine Holiday Kit) with 16 practical strategies that have helped our family transform our vacation experiences. Share your own holiday tips by emailing me—I'd love to hear what works for your family!

https://info.the-untypical-ot.co.uk/neurodivergent-family-holiday-guide

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Untypical Parent Podcast
• 0:52 Holiday Pressures and Expectations
• 4:16 Realistic Family Holiday Experiences
• 9:02 Finding Your Family's Sweet Spot
• 13:25 Holiday Tips and Resources
• 18:10 Closing Thoughts and Invitation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the Untypical Parent Podcast, where doing things differently is more than okay. I'm Liz Evans and I am the Untypical OT and I am your host. I'm here to open up conversations that go beyond the stereotypical child, parent and family. This is your go-to space to find your backup team, the people who truly get it, because we were never meant to do this alone. Each week, through a mix of guest interviews and solo episodes, we'll explore a wide range of topics, because every family is unique and there's no one size fits all when it comes to parenting. But before we dive in, if you're enjoying what I share and want to support the podcast, you can buy me a cuppa. You'll find all the links in the show notes. Are you ready? Come join me. Hi and welcome to the Untypical Parent Talks to Herself the short little, mini, bite-sized episodes that I do chatting to myself. I'm actually chatting to you, but it feels like I'm talking to myself.

Speaker 1: 1:12

This episode I am talking about holidays. Now, this might fill some of you with dread. I know it has done me in the past. So not only are holidays changes in routines, which can be difficult, not only for our kids, but for us as well, as parents sometimes, you know, I know I miss the routine. I like the routine myself and we lose that. But often we feel this pressure to go away from home, to holiday away. Some of us like that more than others. Sometimes holidays are great things, sometimes they are not so great. Great things, sometimes they are not so great. And this episode I just want to talk about some of my experience with holidaying as an additional needs family what has worked, what hasn't worked and a little bit about what I've got on offer at the moment that might be helpful, moving towards whatever holiday actually you're thinking about.

Speaker 1: 2:28

At the moment, as I'm recording, we're heading towards the summer holidays, but actually this works whenever we might be looking at going away on holiday. This isn't specific to the summer. It could be for Christmas, it could be winter. So I always think, talking of Christmas, I always think holidays away from home are a bit like Christmas that there is this expectation, there is a want and a wish to have the perfect holiday, just like Christmas, to be the perfect Christmas where everybody is happy, everybody's joyful, everyone has a great time and everyone's just smiling and laughing. You know that kind of picture, the ones that you see on tv in the films, um, for holidays, the ones that you see in the brochures of the family running down the beach, everybody's joyful and gleeful when they're in and out of the water and everyone's happy and that's never happened on any of my holidays, let me tell you. But we have this idealistic view of what a holiday should look like and then often when we go one, it's taken. We know what holidaying like is in the school.

Speaker 1: 3:42

Holidays is like extortionate amount of money. So not only are we now going away from home, we are now paying huge amounts of money and when we get there, it's really, really difficult, and you come home being more tired than when you went as a parent. The kids often haven't enjoyed themselves, and this I'm not talking about every family. Some families will go away and this will be fine, but if you are one of those families that are finding it tricky, then this is the episode for you to have a think about this. So we have done a combination of things we have been abroad as a family once probably might explain to you. We'll give you an impression as how that went. It was okay. It was okay.

Speaker 1: 4:34

Um, we have not gone on holiday some years. Some of that is through choice and some of that's through finances. And then we have holidayed away from home in this country. So we're in the I'm in the uk, um, I'm in the south of england and we have holidayed kind of around really up, and so I want to talk a bit about it, because I know holidays sometimes have a lot of pressure that go with them. We feel a lot of pressure as parents to make these holidays perfect. We're working our backsides off to make sure everyone's happy Often we aren't and we forget that the holiday isn't just about the kids. That actually, in amongst all of this, I'd quite like a bit of a holiday.

Speaker 1: 5:24

I need something too, and a bit like you'll hear me talk all the time is thinking about what parents need as well. And that doesn't mean I am not saying that we don't care about our kids and our kids needs and wants and desires are never thought about again. That is not what I'm saying, but as part of it, we still need to think about what parents need. We are still human beings that have needs that are often not being met, and when we go through really tricky times with our kids, actually our needs are often not even acknowledged, not just by ourselves, but also by professionals. It becomes all about the kids, and I understand that, and we do need to look after our kids. But if you have got a family that is crumbling or a parent that is crumbling around that child it doesn't take a genius to work out you're not going to get the best support or results for that that child. You need to put the support in for those parents as well, and that's what I fight for and argue for and shout about and want people to to listen to is that we have got to take care of our parents as well as looking after the children. It can't be just about the kids. Like we know, it's never just about the parents. It's got to be both, because without the parents it's not going to happen. They are crucial, they are the linchpin to it all and yet they're the people that get the least amount of support. So I'll stop harping on about that bit.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Holidays so we often go away thinking, oh, you know, we're gonna go away, it's gonna be amazing, the kids are gonna play in the sea, I'm gonna lie on the white beach, I'm gonna have a cocktail, everyone's gonna be happy, we'll have lovely food, everyone will sleep. Does that happen? Probably can hear people listening to this going. Well, I've never had that um, and actually there might be quite a few about they're going. Actually we've been on holiday and I can't even face ever going again.

Speaker 1: 7:27

It's been so difficult and it is difficult and I think sometimes it is about setting some realistic expectations that just because we go away, we can't expect that our children will suddenly be different. So if our kids have difficulties at home, they're going to have difficulties, have difficulties and go away. It's just that we're doing it in a different place and then on top of that, we've taken away their routines and their familiarity. On top of that, we've taken away our own routines and familiarity and that can have an impact on us as parents. Some of us don't like it, but some of us do um, and that can be really tricky. So we go away. We've changed things. We know our kids find things difficult and maybe we find things difficult too. Maybe we don't like big crowds and loads of you know, loads of noise, and maybe our kids don't like heat and we've gone somewhere and it's.

Speaker 1: 8:30

We thought we'd go in the May half term and it'd be nice and you know it'd be quieter and we thought the weather won't be great so great because it's May and we turn up and it's 30 degrees and it's rammed at the beach and everything's not quite as we expected and that can make things really tricky that we go away thinking somehow it's going to be different. Just because we've gone away, everybody's going to have a great time. And if you have done that with your kids and come away thinking, oh good grief, why did we go? Or, even worse, maybe you've been away and thought halfway through a holiday we ain't staying, things are so bad, we're going home and everybody comes home feeling awful. And I think what I've been looking at over the years is what we have done as a family to make our holidays more, more about having a bit of fun, having some connection and having some confidence and that we can go away from home and we can have good times. Now I've lightly brushed on it that some of that is about realistic expectations. I don't know one family and that's what I suppose.

Speaker 1: 9:50

I picked up my last holiday. We've just been on and we went not very far. We went down to the South Coast and along a bit. We stayed for five days because I know five days is our max. I have learned five days is about when everybody's done, so we get. We don't ever book week holidays anymore. We just do five days, which is four nights.

Speaker 1: 10:11

Um, I have made mistakes along the way of trying to book for longer than that and I know our sweet spot it's five days. Other people it could be different, your sweet pot could be two days, your sweet spot could be seven days. Whatever it is, but it's trying to find that sweet spot and knowing when, and it could change and it may well change. I might get longer from my kids as they get older, but I know for us at the moment it's five days and that's what we go for. So we went away five days and we had ups and downs. We have ups and downs at home and we had ups and downs when we were away and my expectations are that that's okay. It is okay to expect ups and downs whilst we're on holiday. It is absolutely okay. In fact, I'd be worried if we didn't. I'd be thinking who didn't? I'd be thinking who are these kids? They're not mine. So it is okay to have ups and downs when you go away because we have them at home. Things change, things are different and in fact it could be more tricky going on holiday because things are different and we're out of routines and stuff's changed and whatever. So we I discovered that, um, and.

Speaker 1: 11:23

But what I was really interested to see and I am a bit of a people watcher is that I was sat watching. So we were on near the beach and I sat watching, uh, quite distance away, because I'm not a people peep, as in. I don't like being around crowds of people particularly so I'm often in the quiet bit, away from all the other people. But there was lots of families walking past and it was really really interesting to watch. Now there were families out there that I you know it's like you can spot your neurokin out there and there were some families that I could spot. There were additional needs in that family and there were families that coming past that I thought actually they probably look like they could be neurotypical. But I have also learned that looks are deceiving and there may well have been some additional needs I couldn't obviously see.

Speaker 1: 12:11

But anyway, I would say the majority of families that were around there were issues with behavior. There were very stressed looking parents. There was crying I didn't spot any parents crying. It was close on a couple of them, but no, no one was actually crying. Kids crying that, I thought, actually do you know what?

Speaker 1: 12:39

This is normal, and we do go away thinking. Everybody goes away, and social media has a lot to say for this. It has a lot to play with. This is that we get these idealistic views of what our holidays should look like, and a bit like I talk about being the perfect parent and aspiring to be that perfect parent, and we are setting ourselves up to fail. We are doing exactly the same with these holidays that we go away thinking just because I spent a load of money and when going somewhere lovely, we're all going to have a lovely time, and when it doesn't happen, we are then disappointed and upset. Then we get disappointed and upset and we get fed up, and then what happens is everything slowly starts to unravel because now nobody's happy, what's the point? And we end up in a spiral that basically ends up with us not enjoying a holiday, going home early or whatever it is.

Speaker 1: 13:36

So my biggest thing and my biggest takeaway is around being realistic, about being realistic about what your holiday might actually look like, that there will be bumps and meltdowns along the way, but it's how you manage them and support them. There may be times when, yeah, so also, it was about that sweet spot. So it's about your sweet spot, wasn't it about those five days we know is our sweet spot? So part of the reason for this podcast episode was to acknowledge that holidays are tricky, to acknowledge that there are ways round it. There are ways to go on holiday and we have found a way as a family now to go away. It might not look like everybody else's holidays, but I'm really okay with that and that works for us as a family and I have developed a confidence around what our holidays look like and I now use that to repeat each year. And we have got to a point where we are starting to be able to go to different places and using the strategies that I use to transfer into different places, and that's working and helping. Have I gone abroad again yet with my kids? No, I haven't not yet. Would I like to at some point? Yes, and I think the strategies that we're building and the the support systems that we're building and the confidence that we're all building as a family the three of us me and the two boys that I think we will get away abroad at some point, but I am I'm confident in the fact that at the moment what is working for us works well and when we go away, each of us gets something from that holiday, and that's OK with me.

Speaker 1: 15:46

What I have done, and is available if you're interested, is I have put together all the strategies and kind of little tips and techniques that have helped me with my family going away for our holidays. There are 16 of them. There's 16 tips that I have got and it is part of something called I'll make sure I get it right the internal sunshine holiday kit. So the internal sunshine is about bringing the internal sunshine. I cannot promise you the weather, especially if you are holidaying in the UK, as you will well know if you are used to the UK the likelihood of having the sunshine on our holiday who knows, who knows with that one. But I have put it all together and what I've done is put it in a video, because this is how I do. Better is talking. If you know me well, you'll know that I'm dyslexic, so writing for me is a bit more tricky and I just prefer to talk it. So I have done a video recording. So there's a video recording and there is a handout, because I know some people just like it written down. So there is both and those are both available for seven pounds. I'm going to put the link for that in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 17:00

As I say, that's 16 of the tips that I have tried and tested with my family and have enabled us to go on holiday, and it might just be that you find in there half those tips work for you and makes a difference, and if that was the case, I'm really pleased that that might have, could make my, might mean that you can get away with your, your family, and feel more confident in doing that. So I will put that in the show notes and if you have any questions or anything like that, drop me an email. Really happy to hear from people and, again, as I always say, I really enjoy hearing from you as untypical parents. So you untypical lot. If you would like to drop me an email, please do. Again, it is in the show notes, the contact email. Drop me an email. I'd love to hear about it.

Speaker 1: 17:52

Maybe you can tell me about a holiday you've been on or maybe you've got a top tip about how you manage holiday, and maybe that's what we need to do is collate a load of more tips for holidaying abroad in a holiday, just generally for additional needs families. So if that's the case, drop me an email. Love to hear from you. All that leaves me to say is thank you very much for joining me. Take care and I will see you soon. Thank you for listening and choosing to spend your time with me today. If you enjoyed this episode, please do share it with a friend who might just feel reassured to know that they aren't on their own. And if you've got a moment, a quick rating or review helps others to find the podcast too. If you want to stay in the loop with the podcast updates and all things Untypical OT, just drop me an email and I'd be really happy to add you to the list. Take care and I'll see you soon.